Every new beginning comes from some other beginnings end..

So the time has come for me to leave… and it is certainly bittersweet. I am so anxious to get home and see my family and my amazing boyfriend, yet I am sad to see Hohoe go.

As a small contribution to my work, I made them a poster that says, “Keep Clean, Stay Healthy!” Then it has a bar of soap, a faucet with water dripping, and two hands that are “washing.” I made one hand white and one hand black and intertwined the fingers and put at heart above them. My supplies for making the poster were very limited, so while I had great expectations for it, it kind of turned out looking like a small child made it. But when I brought it to work, Samuel, the director of Pro-Link Hohoe, told me it was “beautiful” and immediately hung it on the wall. Everybody was praising it and asking me to teach them how to make one. It is amazing how something as insignificant as a handmade sign can be so special to them. It really made me feel good. I also suggested that they show it to the schools that they visit so that the kids can try to make one for their own schools. It is a great idea, and I hope it works, but again, with lack of resources it might be complicated.

To wrap up my work at Pro-Link, I completed a full analysis report, which ended up being nine pages long. Since we didn’t go to any schools Thursday, it was very slow at the office and so I was taking my sweet time doing the report, making it as detailed as possible. I put graphs on it and charts and did data analsis… putting that college degree to use! Then after about 2.5 hours, I finally looked at the other guys and said, “so… what are YOU doing today??” because they were just sitting at the table talking and I was sort of giving them a hard time. Then they looked at me funny and said, “We are waiting for you to finish your report so the staff can review it.” Oops! One of many lost in translation instances. I reviewed my report with them and told them they are welcome to help me amend it etc etc. I gave them suggestions as well as recommendations and praises and they seemed very interested in what I was saying.

The last afternoon I spend walking around town by myself, just looking at everything one more time. It was really kind of serene, because it was SOO hot, and so I got a FanMilk (ice cream in a bag) and started walking down the street, when it just started to rain. It’s hard to adequately explain the feeling…but it just felt dreamlike. Walking down a West African street by myself, in the rain, eating an ice cream. It was perfect.

Today (Friday) was my official last day. I went to work in the morning, and the staff and myself just talked the whole morning. The director read my report and said that he is thinking about maybe distributing my report to all of the schools so they can see where they stand in comparison to each other, in hopes that that will inspire them to keep working hard. Then, they showered me with gifts! They presented me with a certificate that indicates my help in the BOS program, and said that they were highly impressed with me and recommend me to any future employers… (anybody out there reading this? Eh eh?) Then they gave me a necklace and a bracelet. Samuel wanted a picture of him giving me everything, so I have it all captured on film, which I am thankful for. Also, one day Ernest was wearing a batik shirt (hope you looked it up when I told you to a few posts ago…!) that said “ Pro-Link” on it. I told him I would like one, and he told me that a group of women living with HIV make them for ProLink, and they are stationed in Accra. Anyway, the point of it is, they couldn’t get me one in time before I left, and so Ernest literally gave me the shirt off his back so I could have a ProLink shirt. It just blows my mind that these people who have so little, are so eager to give. Amazingly, that was not the most gracious gift I received that day. Delight came to the office so she could say goodbye to me. She gave me a bracelet as a gift, which in itself would have been more than enough, but then she told me that the bracelet belonged to her GREAT GRANDMOTHER and has been passed down in her family through all the women. I was floored. I told her I could not accept it, especially since she has a daughter of her own. She would not hear it. She put it on my arm and tied it and told me, “Don’t take it off until you go here” and pointed to the sky. It is the most simple of all the bracelets I have accumulated. The beads look like they are just small balls of clay, but it means more to me than any other thing on my whole trip. After that ordeal, the copies of pictures that I had printed for everybody seemed extremely trite, but not to them. They were all extremely pleased; I should have known better to think otherwise!

Somehow I made it through the afternoon without crying, even when Samuel started playing music and chose to play “Heal the World” by Michael Jackson, followed by “Hero” by Mariah Carey. Finally I looked at him and said, “ Are you TRYING to play the saddest songs ever???” Then he smiled and changed it to Beyonce. Hah!

After many hours of travel, I am finally at the Kotoka airport in Accra once again. It is definitely weird being here. I can’t believe it has been three weeks already, but then again it feels like months since I have been home. I got a taste of culture shock when I arrived at the airport and nobody was yelling “Yevu” or smiling and waving at me. I got all flustered! Good Lord, I might have an aneurism when I get back to LAX!! ☺ Also, I have not eaten since noon, and it is now 8pm. Of course, being the tard that I am, I assumed that the eateries at the airport would accept Visa so I could grab dinner while I waited for my flight. Wrong. The only place that accepts any form of card is the duty free store selling only chocolate and alcohol. When I tried to buy some chocolate, I was told there is a $25 minimum. Urgh. So, I was sulking thinking about how hungry I was/am, and then I realized…I am going to be fine. I am only hungry because a place I went to doesn’t accept plastic, not because a draught dried up all my crops, or because I am too poor to afford to buy something. That my friends, is what seeing real poverty makes you realize. I may be thousands of dollars deep in student loans, and I might have no lunch or dinner today, but I am sitting in an air-conditioned room waiting for a 747 airplane to pick me up, while I type on my $1000 laptop. I am not poor. And more than that, I am rich. I have friends in Hohoe who were devastated to see me go, and I have friends and family in California anxiously waiting to see me come home, and that is really what it is all about. Once I found that the people I met who had the LEAST material possessions and accommodations were the happiest, most gracious people I have ever met, I realized it is time to take a step back and be thankful. It is time for us to live a little bit more like Ghanaians.